Between the June release of his memoir, Communion, and a nonstop media circuit, Vance is behaving less like a man weighing his options and more like a candidate already running. 

It would be shocking if he didn’t. Few primary contenders in the modern era, incumbent vice presidents or otherwise, have enjoyed Vance’s aura of inevitability. The ones who did coasted to the nomination on name recognition and institutional authority, soaring above the fray while the rest of the field scrapped over “lanes.” They didn’t align with a tribe, but cast themselves as rightful heirs to something larger. 

Vance appears to have other plans. Months before primary season kicks off, Vance is leaning hard into the tribal conflicts engulfing the GOP. Appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast this week, Vance took bold stances on the Right’s most hotly contested debates, often wading into the most controversial minutiae.

On Iran, the vice president predictably defended the administration’s actions, including the memorandum of understanding he negotiated with Iran, and lamented what he believes are “misrepresentations” of the deal in the media. 

But Vance went much further. He accused elements of the Israeli government of running an influence campaign against the MOU — pointing to a report alleging money flowed through a former Trump campaign operative to fund pro-Israel voices attacking the deal. The implication was hard to miss: Vance’s Republican critics on Iran were, unwittingly or not, foot soldiers in a foreign government’s lobbying operation.

“My response to that is, well, go to hell,’ Vance said.

On the economy, Vance trained his fire on the free-market orthodoxy that has defined the GOP since the days of Reagan. 

“We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs,” he said, “of becoming a services and finance economy and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable … line goes up asset. And what has that done? It’s created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism.”

This isn’t just populist rhetoric — it’s an argument that the GOP’s own economic orthodoxy “rigged the system,” as he later said, creating the conditions for the socialism he claims to be fighting.

What’s striking about the vice president’s comments on foreign policy and the economy is that they don’t reflect the broader mindset of the GOP as it exists today, but only a small, energized faction. A recent Echelon survey of likely Republican primary voters, for instance, finds that 64% have a positive view of Israel — down from previous highs, but still an overwhelming majority — and 73% favor a GOP candidate who would support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. 

On the economy, Vance is accelerating a fight within the party by cementing his position as a pro-worker populist. Vance has said he believes the GOP’s intellectual center of gravity is shifting away from free markets toward government intervention that promotes domestic industry. 

There is some data to back this up. Gen Z and millennial Republicans in particular hold favorable views toward unions, while roughly half approve of the president’s tariff regime — though that support has softened substantially in the previous year. 

But the fact remains that most of the Republican base favors traditional, free market conservatism. Eighty percent of Republicans say they prefer candidates who keep government out of business activity, and a majority reject raising taxes on corporations or high earners — the two most basic markers of the party’s post-Reagan economic identity. These statistics don’t reflect a party of voters that believes the American dream is out of reach if they are left alone to pursue it. Not yet, at least.

As with foreign policy, Vance is carving out a clearly defined lane within the Republican Party. The move has predictably intensified both the admiration of his ideological allies and the hostility of the traditionalists, who still make up the bulk of the party. 

It’s a bold strategy — betting on a GOP that doesn’t exist yet, but will someday if he has anything to say about it. 

It’s also strikingly unusual for someone long-seen as a runaway favorite for the nomination. 

The two previous vice presidents to run following a two-term president — George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Al Gore in 2000, both seen as inevitable nominees — didn’t build factions of their own so much as manage the ones they inherited. 

For Bush, that meant bending toward the Reaganite wing that doubted his conservative bona fides, promising ‘no new taxes’ to shore up a base that saw him, in the words of one skeptic, as ‘the Establishment moderate he’d always been.’ 

For Gore, it meant creating distance from the tawdry affairs of his boss, culminating in the “Big Kiss” on Tipper’s lips at the DNC. Neither man picked a side in his party’s internal disputes — they moved toward whichever side already held the upper hand.

While not an incumbent vice president, Hillary Clinton carried a similar aura of inevitability into the 2016 primary. Like Bush Sr. and Gore, she too sought to manage her boss’s coalition, not to win a factional fight. Her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), picked a lane instead — and while he may have been successful in charting his party’s future, he lost that nomination fight. And the next one. 

TRUMP NEEDS A RESET ON IRAN

What does this all mean for the nominating battle ahead? If nothing else, it all-but ensures a meaningful and likely bitter clash. Vance’s recent exploits have given both sides reason to dig in rather than make peace.

There will be no coronation. Vance doesn’t seem to want one. He’s spoiling for a fight.